Bellocq has remained a famous enigma, after his extraordinary photographs were exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in 1970. He has appeared as a character in a novel and as the subject of a controversial film, Pretty Baby by Louis Malle. Nobody knows when or how he died.The glass plates, from which the photographs in this book were made, were purchased by Lee Friedlander. They have been re-edited from this archive with an introduction by Susan Sontag.